Robert Yan is a New York–based aritst working with photography, video, text, and multimedia installation. Trained in both philosophy and photography, his projects draw on direct observation and archival research to examine the subtle fractures between reality and ideas of that reality.

Fire! Fire! Fire! documents fires across New York City, observing how the same emergency can be a disaster for some and a spectacle for others. The Celestials brings together historical archives, video, and installation to examine the racial myths surrounding early Chinese immigrants in the United States, tracing how exclusion became erasure, fantasy became fear.

He received an MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in 2026.